Instant Pot Red Beans and Rice

Description

Dried small red beans are pressure cooked quickly and simmered with cajun sausage, onion, green pepper and cajun seasonings to make a saucy stew to serve over rice. And the rice can be cooked at the same time and in the same pot as the red beans!

Instructions

Soak or quick soak: Soak your beans overnight in 4 cups of water and 1 tsp of salt OR perform the quick soak method.

Quick Soak: Add the beans to your Instant Pot with 4 cups of water and 1 tsp of salt. Bring to a boil using the saute setting. Once the water is boiling then quickly cover the pressure cooker and and turn valve to sealing. Set the manual/pressure cook button to 2 minutes. When time is up slowly move valve to venting. If foam escapes then move valve back to sealing for 20 seconds and try again. Remove the lid.

Cover your Instant Pot and move valve to sealing. Set the manual/pressure cook button to 12 minutes. When the time is up let the pressure release naturally for up to 20 minutes. Then remove the lid.

Discard the bay leaf.

Thicken the stew with a cornstarch slurry. Mix 2 Tbsp of cornstarch with 3 Tbsp of cold water until smooth then stir the mixture into the Instant Pot. Turn the Instant Pot to the saute setting. The stew will thicken fairly quickly.

Serve red beans and sausage over rice. We liked ours with a dollop of sour cream on top. To make this less spicy you could use a regular smoked sausage instead of cajun sausage and use half as much smoked paprika.

Notes

To make pot in pot rice: Fill a pan that fits in your Instant Pot with 2 cups of water and 1 ⅓ cups of rice. Use a sling to lower the pan on top of the other ingredients. I did this using my OXO sling* and a pan like this* and it worked fabulous!